Belgium is
talented. 15 of 23 players on the World Cup
roster play for Champions League teams.

Belgium was killing
teams at this time last year.They went undefeated in their 10 UEFA
World Cup qualifying games.

Belgium was
tipped as a World Cup "dark horse"so early and so unanimously that they
ceased to meet the actual definition of a dark horse long
before the tournament began.People think they're going to go far at
this tournament.

They were a disappointment as a soccer nation in the early-2000s
— failing to qualify for the 2004, 2008, and 2012 Euros, as well
as the 2006 and 2010 World Cups. Then, all at once, top-tier
players started coming out of the woodwork.

Manchester City's Vincent Kompany, who
could miss the U.S. game with a groin injury, is one of the
best defenders in the Premier League. Eden Hazard and Thibaut
Courtois are two of the best players in the world at their
positions. Romelu Lukaku is one of the most sought-after young
strikers in Europe.

It's a roster full of players who play major roles at big clubs,
and pretty much all of them emerged in the last three years.

But this doesn't really directly answer the question: How good is
Belgium?

They dominated their World Cup qualifying group with eight wins
and two draws. But five of those wins came against Scotland,
Wales, and Macedonia. They've been shaky in friendlies since UEFA
qualifying ended — losing to Colombia and Japan, drawing Ivory
Coast, and beating Sweden and Tunisia — but you probably can't
really take anything away from that.

In this World Cup they've been mildly disappointing, despite
three wins in Group H. They needed an 80th-minute goal to come
back and beat Algeria 2-1, an 88th-minute goal to beat Russia
1-0, and a 78th-minute goal to beat South Korea 1-0 with 10 men.

They're getting the results, but the attacking flair and
creativity we saw in mid-2013 has been absent. Lukaku was subbed
off in both games he started, Kompany has an injury and is
questionable for the U.S. game, and Hazard has drifted in and out
of games.

On the one hand, winning without playing your best is typically
the mark of a good team.

On the other hand, where is the young, exciting, Belgium team
that we were all promised? Where's the team that we saw
eviscerate the U.S. with three goals in 15 minutes in the second
half of a friendly last summer? Where's the Belgium that was
expected to announce itself at this tournament?

Based on any metric, Belgium is not Brazil, Germany, Argentina,
or France. And that's what makes this such
an opportunity for the U.S. — there's a sense that this a
winnable game for the Americans.

But there's also the sense that Belgium has another gear in them,
that their collection of talented individuals will eventually
cohere in such a way that the U.S. cannot win this game, no
matter how well they play.